ned in the law, nor so formidable as a person,
was able to assist the _patronus_ before the tribunal on behalf of
others. There was in addition a body of men called "jurist consults,"
learned in the law and able to advise, who came to be recognized as the
members of a select profession in the time of Augustus.

In the year 200 before Christ, the Cincian law was enacted, requiring
that service of the _patronus_ and the advocate should be gratuitous,
but it was soon evaded even as the Jewish laws had been. Again presents
were made to secure the skilled advocacy of men learned in the law and
acute in debate. These gifts like the Hebrew ones were paid in advance
and were called "honorariums," another term which suggests the modern
retainer. Neither an _advocatus_ nor a _patronus_ could sue for such
honorarium at law because it was a violation of law, but once paid, the
honorarium could not be recovered. Cicero boasted that he never violated
the Cincian law, but historians of his period intimate that by secret
loans and testamentary gifts his practice proved to be very profitable.
And it is certain, at least, that many of his contemporaries were made
very rich by professional remuneration. Augustus directed the passage of
another law forbidding compensation to orators and advocates, but it was
disregarded and subsequent emperors contented themselves with fixing
limits for the fees to be charged. In the golden age of the Roman law,
therefore, the payment of the profession became recognized as legitimate
and the profession itself became a definite body with clearly understood
functions.

In England, for two hundred years after the Conquest, the priests were
the only learned men, and they, too, like the Scribes, acted as judges
and advisers of litigants. Even as late as the time of Henry VIII, as we
know, the Keeper of the King's Conscience and the head of the Court of
Equity, was an Ecclesiastic in the formidable person of Cardinal
Woolsey. About the reign of King John, laymen became lawyers, and in
Henry III's time the Pope forbade priests to fit themselves in civil law
or to act as advisers in respect to it. We may properly say that the
profession of the Bar, as a recognized English institution, had its
beginnings in the struggle for individual rights by which the English
race forced the great charter from King John. We find that in the
history of the early English administration of justice, bailiffs,
undersheriffs, clerica